Monday, February 22, 2010

2010 Topps Baseball First Break

On Saturday 20 Feb I went to Target and got a blaster of 2010 Topps Baseball (10 packs of 8 cards plus 1 pack of a special "Historical Commemorative Patch Card") and 3 Jumbo Packs (36ct. Rack Packs). I made a video of my breaking the blaster on Ustream (I am "captkirk42" there also) and since the recording for the Jumbo packs didn't save I made a "review" video of those. Here let me give the links to the videos.

In my video I think I mentioned some cards that I thought were duplicates but upon later review they are the short print? "raw back" variations so those will not be for trade.

I got 4 of the Topps Million Card Giveaway cards (TMC-6, 7, 8, & 9). I unlocked all 4 tonight and will sometime post what cards I will be getting along with the fronts of the TMC cards to show what they look like. I plan on collecting the 10 different TMC cards. I'm not sure what I will do with any duplicates after they have been unlocked and redeemed. The cards I unlocked were all 1970s cards, 2 are 1975 and 2 are 1973 I don't think I had any of them before.

Hisotrical Commemorative Patch CardMCP-2 - 1923 World Series Commemorative Patch Babe Ruth Yankees TRADEDI'm sort of torn about it as I'm against patch cards because normally they are just pieces from a uniform but these are manufactured patches replicas of real patches. Based on a card from last year with the Babe on it that was valued at $30 I was told this one is probably about $20-$25

Overall opinion of the set. Very Good. Perhaps there are a few too many subsets. Not a big fan of the Toppstown or oddly enough the Legendary Lineage subsets. I will not collect the Legendary Lineage set, the Toppstown I will only collect select cards from. I am undecided on the Peak Performance set.

I noticed in the blaster there were some short prints that have the raw unfinished backs (like in the days of vintage before all the shiny glossy modern stuff) from the front it took me a little while to notice the one subtle difference. The Topps logo on the SPs is the 70s logo where the "T" curves under the word. The regular variations have the modern Topps logo everything else on the front appears the same. The regular versions seem to have brighter deeper colors this may because of the cardstock.

yeah, I got mixed feeling about the manu-patch stuff. It's not as nice as a "genuine" piece of an actual jersey, but then again, even those aren't actually genuine anymore... but I also don't put much of a premium on the manufactured stuff, worth more than some of the base stuff, but how much more.. I don't know...

Don't Toss That Junk

Got cards from the dreaded junk years (mid to late 1980s to late 1990s)? Never dump them in the trash, put them in the recycling bin first. Better yet send them to me. Believe it or not I still need to complete most of the flagship Topps, Donruss and Fleer sets from those years, as well as many vintage years. For a life-long collector I have very few full sets. As a kid I could never afford them and as an adult I don't see when they are affordable to me.